wasp

Once when i was getting water there were heaps of little fingernail sized jellyfish, i thought they would look pretty cool in the tank so I went home & did a water change straight away to dump some water with the jellyfish into the tank. But they couldn't handle the current they all got munched by pumps within a very short time. Shame.

Wow what a lovely video Sapphire! Didn't know your tank looked so good! Is that anemone a H. Malu? If so great choice, my favourite anemone. Yes DantezGirl there are long and shorter tentacle anemones, some of them the clowns can disappear from view completely.

Very interesting! You removing the triplefins so they won't predate the shrimps etc?

Yes a baby blue maomao would be an awesome fish, but I've never been able to find where the baby ones are. Where do the baby ones hang out?

Also it is very time consuming, takes much longer than you would think. Most people who start marine, set up their first tank, then in the course of time realise things about their set up they would like to have done better, and as they go through the learning curve, eventually set up a better tank. So if you are currently renting, you could set up a smallish tank of 3 or 4 feet, (.900 or 1.200), and the natural process will happen of learning so by the time you move house you could set up a better and permanent tank in the new house and transfer you livestock over to it, and sell the old tank. That's one suggestion but there's many ways, just depending how much time you're prepared to put in.

Yes interesting question about the snails & crabs. A few times in the past I have loaded up a bucket with critters from a sheltered area where they could be collected, and dumped them into the sump (when I had one). However over a period of a few weeks there is a big reduction in biodiversity, and eventually almost none of the critters remain. I think what happens in a closed ecosystem is some of them just don't have their natural food. And some of them eat other ones and once they have eaten all of them, they themselves die. Some snails are carnivorous, I don't know much about snails but have been careful what to put in the tank. Some of the NZ native crabs are filter feeders, I know this because when I had some in the sump and they got settled in, you could watch them spread out two filter type things, that looked something like the appendage that comes out of a barnacle when it is feeding, from near their mouth & filter the water. However in a tank they would not have got much. They could also eat food such as chopped mussel.

Is that an archerfish?

Well is the problem the importation of organisms, or the collection of NSW? Have MAF ever considered that we collect NSW? If our collection of NSW is an issue then how do they feel about big container ships dumping 100's of tons of foreign ballast water into our waters if they have to leave with a heavier load?

Well for me the expense and hassle of using artificial salt would probably tip me over the edge and I would quit the hobby. But please do keep us fully informed Reef any time MAF communicate to you an issue on the matter. The cross contamination risk though is not that great, what I do is collect water & tip it into the tank. The container itself has no contact with the tank. I go and collect more water, no risk of cross contamination.

Years ago when my son was small he set up a cold water marine, 3 foot, and stocked it with stuff he collected around rock pools etc. One day he was fishing at the wharf and caught a tiny snapper so he came a real fast trip home and put it in the tank. It was illegal, (yes I'll admit it), but it seemed to adapt to tank life straight away and just cruised around the tank looking for stuff to eat. No trouble getting it to eat it would eat anything. But it had a tremendous appetite and grew very fast, only a few months and it was getting too big for the tank. We took a trip to the beach and released it, it seemed to sense it was free at last, and just streaked out to sea till we couldn't see it. My son shed a few tears. I'm told it would not have survived as it would not have learned survival skills, but I'm not so sure, it was a true survivor. Very curious, keen to try to eat anything new, and always looking around, I think it might have made it!

What is that skimmer, an Aqua C?

The idea of that algae is that it will grow & use anything in the water that algae needs, so that nuisance algae can't grow in the rest of the tank. You can get similar algaes here. You harvest some of the algae as it grows to give room for it to keep growing. That is the theory. The practice is not always quite so straight forward, ie, it will not always totally eradicate all other algae.

If there is no livestock in there, leave the lights off & keep the tank dark. If the algae cannot grow cos it's dark, the nutrients will instead be available for skimming. Also vacuum regularly any detritus off the bottom of the tank, and blow the rocks clean of any dirt regularly.

Well that is a VERY weak skimmer. The thing is if you are not adding any food to the tank you can get away with less of a skimmer because there is not much to take out but i think that one might be not enough even in those circumstances. To get an idea of the kind of bubble action you might want check this video. (even though the guy filmed it sideways :roll: ). You could maybe make the one in your first video perform better by putting a powerful airpump on it? I don't know. Anyhow if you can get the skimmer sorted the next main hurdle would be correct lighting, for the kind of corals you would have, in a 35 litre, you will want 20 or so watts of marine grade light.

Dixon I'm assuming you're not allowed to have a big one because of cost and size? What is the maximum size you are allowed and what is the maximum budget? Tell us that and we can tell you what you can do, or wether it can be done at all. All the above advice is right on the mark. It is hard especially when starting to have a proper marine tank in a tiny tank, for a lot of reasons. However if you were prepared to have no fish, it would be possible to run a tank even only 35 litres, with just some hardy corals such as zooathids and mushrooms. You should still have some kind of skimmer, but a very basic one would do if you had no fish. But the cost, and skill level required, will increase many multiples if you attempted to have anything in the tank that needs feeding, such as fish, shrimps, or whatever.

My guess is first, fruitflies, you can tell if they zone in on the rubbish bin if you have some fruit in there, or second, flying ants. Flying ants are the males which come out of the nest in big numbers every few months.

Well I took your advice Vinsen & downloaded Safari, i like it! Definitely faster. Like everything Apple it's a bit different, but no doubt I'll adapt to that & find where all the buttons are. I've only had it 5 minutes. Only 18 meg download as opposed to, i think, 60 or so for IE. Automatic spell check too!

Anemones still OK? What about 2 nemos? But if you're looking for something to test the water, for a freebie you could put blenny in out of a rock pool from milford or somewhere.

Yeah, I remember him fondly . But I was really just showing how we can tend to justify our position emotionally, even when some of the things we do are contradictory. I think the NSW/ASW argument, which has been rather aggresive in the past, can be like that. Tap water at 70 is higher than I thought in Chch, my own Auck North Shore water is around 90. But there's no way the water should be 23 after going through DI, probably contamination as you suggested but if not it must be either your tds meter or something wrong with the DI resin. Also is the DI unit assembled correctly? Some of these units can be wrongly set up so the water bipasses the resin. Best plan as you said test it straight out of the DI. If you test it as it is coming out you will get a true reading, which with a decent DI will be 000 ppm, detectable. But even putting it in an apparently clean cup can raise it by a few ppm. BTW when I was in Chch a few months ago i really enjoyed drinking the water, the stories are true, Chch water really does taste good! I couldn't bring my tds and phosphate kit to test it though my wife would have flipped if we were doing fishy stuff on holiday!

Pardon?

Very interesting.

Thanks for the article Reef, it's sad to see what is happening to our gulf. For a while now i have had a sinking feeling that the time might come I can no longer collect water from the sea, we will end up like the US where everybody has to use salt mix. For the time being though I'm seeing tanks using NSW growing lovely healthy corals, but the quality of our seawater is something we need to be aware of and continue to share information on as we become aware of it. There is also an emotional component to the NSW vs ASW thing, where people take a fixed position to support whatever they themselves are doing. An example of that would be an ex Chch reefer who on this forum vehemently opposed the use of NSW on the grounds it might contain pollution, yet got his top up water straight out of the tap! Said the tap water was "good", but never actually tested it. Go figure! :lol:

Ha Ha you are correct of course Jolliolli . I was just thinking about this thread and having a bit of a giggle http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/will-t ... tml#315261 :lol:

The best reason I can think of has it's roots in the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. According to this theory humans have got to number one place on the planet by thousands of years of survival of the fittest. ( And smartest ). But now everything is getting thrown out of balance by the social welfare system. We now have a situation where people who take stupid risks, and spend too much time in bedroom pursuits instead of getting a job, are getting paid to breed. Hence, we have REVERSE evolution. Therefore, there has to be something to even the odds. Smoking is perfect. Everybody knows it will eventually kill and you therefore have to be an idiot to do it. So, let cigerettes be advertised, and let natural selection take place. Think that argument would work? :lol:

But is a tank "equipment"? :lol: :lol: :lol: